How Do You Write A Business Plan?

It’s a perfectly normal question a person who starts to write will be asked, especially when the support they have for their dreams and goals is almost non-existent. This is not only when people, close family or friends make you feel some doubt about your own abilities, but it’s also when you feel that there isn’t as much support for your goals. You need a business plan.

How do you write a business plan when you feel the worst things about yourself as a writer?

Diamonds are made by challenges

Now, before you sit down and worry about your writing, it is best to start asking some business questions about the challenges you might have as a writer, or at least the question you will need to answer with some careful planning. Ask yourself some questions: is it a business for you, or is it a hobby where if you make money it is okay? What’s you next step in building your writing business?

These are basic questions and as a writer, if you are looking to have success, you will need to answer these. This is where a plan will help you. A business plan isn’t a short type of hand written on a napkin type of plan. For the serious writer this is the foundation for who they will earn income and how they will build their writing business.

Which is where the question becomes how do I write a business plan?

1) I spend some time with numbers.

Not your imaginary numbers, but the real day to day, with no changes in how they look. The numbers are the page views on a blog, or how many books on Amazon I sell per day or week. I would in this case, take my own book, In Search of The Lost Ones and break it down to both kindle and paperback sales. I would add what royalties I get from them. I would also factor in the age of the book, and how much more of a shelf life it can have. Not only that, I find any other numbers to do with the websites and a take these historical numbers, and work them into a financial plan. This is the most important part of the business plan, and the part which will take the most time.

2) I spend time, on time.

I’m breaking down what I spend on each part of my business. If my business is writing books, I factor in how much time I spend writing and editing them. If my plan is to grow my blog, I spend time working on plans to grow my blog based on where I am right now, and how much time it take to research and write a blog post. This is more a part of the plan simply because it tells you where you are doing the most work- if you spend most of your time on social networking sites, you will have a challenge getting your numbers.

3) My business plan is forward thinking, but looks backwards for more information.

It’s great to have dreams, but in a business plan it doesn’t matter unless you have goals. Part of what makes a business plan work is when you take even the last few months into consideration and build from there. You can go back to your writing and look at it, have you recently published a book? If not, what is holding you back?

If you take the numbers, and you make a realistic plan and work towards the future of your writing business, you will have success. The problem with success is you have to take the leap and earn it. The more time you spend on your business plan the better.

You can write a business plan with a lot of care, but writing it is only the beginning, a good business plan should be about 20 pages long, and should have a lot of numbers and information combined in this to help grow your business. The next step is taking action. Marketing your blog or your books is one thing all writers will need to do at some point, and it is here where you will build your career.

This means you can build your writing career from the ground up without emotional support, but by using logic and creating the opportunity to be writing for a living.